Before you commit your data…

When you have a small to medium-sized business (SMB), it is tempted to take lowest service offer, especially when a vendor makes big promises. There are plenty of database vendors on the market, and some of them offer very attractive custom proprietary packages or cloud computing solutions. But before you commit your data to what will likely be its permanent resting place, consider a few things:

1. If a vendor makes you custom database software and then goes out of business, what happens to your data?
2. If a vendor’s cloud computing infrastructure breaks down, what happens to your data?
3. If later on down the road, you want to transfer your databases to something more standard, will you lose data in the conversion?

The answer to all three is that some or all of your data could go up in smoke. That is why more businesses, even large ones are opting for free and open source solutions like MySQL or PostgreSQL. You can still hire someone to set it up and manage it, but when that company fades away, your data is still safe. Even if you opt for a cloud solution, having access to your open source databases means that you can pull them at any time and move them to another server with minimal data loss.

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